With the announcement of three new Chiefs coaches today - both on offense and defense, Head Coach Todd Haley, Offensive Coordinator Charlie Weis and Defensive Coordinator Romeo Crennel all made appearances today to lend some commentary on the Chiefs. You can find the full transcript at the Chiefs home page, but for the sake of conversation, here are some key points:
Coach Haley on the difference on staff in coaching experience:
I feel like we have a coaching staff that is very experienced which is very good for our young team, it’s also very good for the other younger coaches on our staff because I think the guys that we now have in place, we have a great knowledge base, a great experience base and a great success base, most importantly.
Haley on how they arrived at hiring Emmitt Thomas:
When his name came up, Scott has a close relationship with (General Manager) Thomas Dimitroff in Atlanta and I know everybody there had nothing but terrific things to say about Coach (Thomas) and with our situation in the secondary, the more we visited with him – Coach Crennel and I actually visited with him at length along with a number of other guys – and just agreed that this was the guy for us.
More after the jump...
Coach Thomas on what it's like to be back with the Chiefs:It’s a wonderful feeling. I retired in ‘78 and had the opportunity to work down at Central Missouri State for two years and then I entered the NFL as an assistant coach with the St. Louis Cardinals before they moved to Arizona. Through all the Super Bowls, the hirings and firings, I’ve always anticipated and wished that I would get an opportunity to come back and finish up my career here in Kansas City where I started as a player.
Coach Haley on the pressure on him this season:
You’re making me the scapegoat. First of all, I wouldn’t say triumvirate or any of those words. This is about trying to put together as good a coaching staff as you can. When you have good coaches that fit together and think in similar directions, then I think you have a chance to succeed. As far as me and the pressures on me, I’m going to be judged by the win-loss column. This is a ‘what-have-you-done-for-me-lately’ business, I’m fully aware of that.
Coach Weis on the amount of work still being done at this time of year by the coaches:
Right now it’s the grind part of the year; everyone thinks this is the slow time. Quite the contrast, we’ve just gotten here but we know there is tons of work to do. But every program that we’ve ever gone into has been a program that was basically where we are right now. Usually when you come into a program with this many changes, it’s because this is where you are. I think Coach Haley has had time to do a lot of due diligence and should be credited to be able to pull a guy like Emmitt Thomas out of his hat, I mean that just doesn’t happen, folks. There’s a lot of due diligence that comes to doing something like that.
Coach Weis on "just being the coordinator" instead of head coach:
I’m glad you’re asking the question to somebody else other than me. It will be kind of nice to just worry about football. One of the things as coordinators in football, it’s a really fun position. You get to study your personnel; you get to study their personnel, their schemes and game plan whereas there are a lot of hats the head coach wears that you don’t have to wear. At this point in time, I’m glad that we have a head coach to take care of that and I’ll just worry about my job.